Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/328

310 running between golden gravels, and then the streams joined each other at the bottom of the hill, and made a brook that flowed silent except that you could kinder see the music specially when the bushes on the banks moved as the music went along down the valley. I could smell the flowers in the meadows. But the sun did n't shine, nor the birds sing; it was a foggy day, but not cold. Then the sun went down, it got dark, the wind moaned and wept like a lost child for its dead mother, and I could a-got up then and there and preached a better sermon than any I ever listened to. There was n't a thing in the world left to live for, not a blame thing, and yet I did n't want the music to stop one bit. It was happier to be miserable than to be happy without being miserable. I could n't understand it. . . . Then, all of a sudden, old Ruben changed his tune. He ripped and he rar'd, he tipped and he tar'd, he pranced and he charged like the grand entry at a circus. Feared to me like all the gas in the house was turned on at once, things got so bright, and I hilt up my head, ready to look any man in the face, and not afeared of nothin'. It was a circus, and a brass band, and a big ball, all goin' on at the same time. He lit into them keys like a thousand of brick, he gave em no rest, day nor night; he set every living joint in me agoin, and not bein' able to stand it no longer, I jumpt spang onto my seat, and jest hollered: ' Go it, my Rube! '

"Every blamed man, woman, and child in the house riz on me, and shouted, 'Put him out! Put him out!'

"With that some several p'licemen run up, and I had to simmer down. But I would a-fit any fool that laid hands on me, for I was bound to hear Ruby out or die.

"He had changed his tune agin. He hopt-light ladies and tiptoed fine from eend to eend of the keyboard. He played soft, and low, and solemn. I heard the church bells over the hills. The candles in heaven was lit, one by one. I saw the